Nathan led the way back to the camp. Greg followed him slowly, limping slightly. He had to stay back a couple of hundred yards from the wooden walls, as long as he was in his wolf form. Nathan went on with the promise to bring him some clothes. Greg let the wolf take over, which was eager to lick the wounds they had sustained.

He jumped, when Nathan returned, on foot now.

The gibbous moon, already high in the darkening sky, made it hard to find his human form. That wasn’t all, though. He didn’t want to think about what happened tonight, and as long as he was wolf, it was hard to think about anything other than food.

He could stay out here. Maybe, Nathan would bring him something to eat instead of his clothes?

But Bernadette, Boris, and Fleur were already inside the camp, he could feel Bernadette’s – whatever it was. Aura. Warmth. And he didn’t feel like spending the night alone in the wild.

“Are you all right?” Nathan asked when he didn’t turn.

Greg made no attempt to answer that question, instead closed his eyes, and found the tightrope in his mind.

“You look pretty wild,” Nathan said a minute later, grinning, when Greg stared down at his hands, still smeared with blood.

There was blood everywhere.

Nathan offered him his clothes. Greg reached for them, then abandoned the movement half-way through, pushed Nathan’s hands away instead. Before Nathan had so much as opened his mouth, Greg was retching, vomiting so hard he found himself almost crawling on all fours.

“I’ll take that as a ‘not okay’,” Nathan said while Greg threw up more bile. He kneeled down next to Greg, and loosened the bottle of water from his belt. “Want some?”

Greg nodded, too out of breath to say anything. He only managed two gulps, before he was gagging again.

“Take your time,” Nathan said calmly.

“Sorry,” Greg muttered, after drinking some more water.

Nathan shrugged. “We all threw up, the first time,” he said. “And we didn’t even have to use our teeth. Well, Andrew and I did, in any case. I dunno about David.”

That didn’t make Greg feel better in the least. He tried to swallow against the new bile that rose in his throat when Nathan mentioned teeth, but it was no good.

“Did you have to say that?” he complained when he could speak again.

“Trust me, it’s better to get it over with,” Nathan said. “Unless you prefer Thoko to take care of you?”

“Very funny,” Greg grumbled.

Nathan grinned. “Or perhaps Fleur?”

Greg rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing going on between me and Fleur, I don’t know why you would even think that.”

There was nothing going on between him and Thoko either. But at least in her case, he wouldn’t have minded if there was.

Nathan eyed him thoughtfully. “I guess it’s a full moon thing, then,” he said. “Cause, when you go around the camp together as wolves, you two certainly seem to be interested in each other.”

Greg stared at him blankly. “What?”

“You really don’t remember much about that time, huh? Last full moon, the two of you spend half a day dozing in the sun side by side, in plain view from the camp. It looked quite – snugly. Thoko was not happy, of course.”

Greg frowned. No, he didn’t remember anything about that. Maybe he shouldn’t be too surprised. He used to remember the days of full moon quite well, but not when he was out with the pack.

And no. He didn’t want Thoko to see him like this, naked, retching, and still covered in blood. His hands, still holding the water bottle, were shaking with weakness.

“Feeling better?” Nathan asked when Greg handed the bottle back and reached for his pants instead.

“Not really,” Greg said quietly. “Just – cold.”

He was still feeling slightly nauseous, and when he struggled to his feet to pull up his pants, he nearly threw up again. His legs were just as bloody as the rest of him. He took it as a good sign, though, that he did manage to keep it down.

Getting dressed seemed to take forever. It surprised him a little, how calmly Nathan was waiting for him to get his shit back together. Nathan wasn’t exactly known for his abundance of patience. But he only began to whistle softly to himself, while Greg dithered around, unsure of whether he wanted to put a shirt onto his blood-smeared chest, or whether he should better wait until he could wash in the camp.

Of course, if he did that, then everyone would see him, covered in blood.

Eventually, he asked for the bottle back and poured the last water into his open palm, to at least clean his face a little and as much of his neck as he managed.

He’d need to shave as soon as he was back at the camp.

“Ready?” Nathan asked when Greg finally did finish dressing.

Greg nodded a little hesitatingly, but he started moving towards the camp. By now, the nausea had fainted enough that the hunger was stronger.

“Think there’ll be anything left to eat?” he muttered, as they walked towards the gates of the camp.

“For you? Sure,” Nathan said.

They walked the rest of the way in silence. The guards at the gates stared at them when they entered, and quickly closed up behind them. Everyone else turned to stare, too, and Greg wished he’d been able to clean himself up better. Were there always this many people out in front of the pub? Or was he just being paranoid?

When the cheer went up, he was so surprised he nearly jumped into his other body.

Nathan smirked, the bastard.

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“Relax,” he muttered. “You saved their lives, let them say their thank-yous.”

One of the workers was already coming towards them, a beer mug in each hand, yelling: “Hail, the heroes are back! Sit down with us, have a drink!”

Greg shuddered, but when Nathan accepted the mug, he did, too. People were surging forward now, and he took a hesitating sip, just so he wouldn’t have to shake hands with every single worker. They were surrounded by so many bodies, there was no way he’d make it over to the barracks.

One of the men even hugged Nathan, who laughed, but stopped the guy before he could move on to Greg.

“Give him some breathing room,” Nathan said, grinning but firm. “It’s nearly full moon, after all.”

That did buy them some space, and Nathan stepped forward at once. Greg wished he could run back into the forest, but the gate was closed behind him.

Nathan dragged him forward. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up,” he said. “And then we’ll find some food, what do you think?”

Greg just nodded and followed close behind him, hanging on to his mug, while Nathan forged them a path over to the hastily erected wooden hut the pack had been put up in.

“I’ll get some water,” Nathan promised, and a moment later Greg could hear the clanking sound of the crank from the camp’s little well. They had had to dig deeper twice already because of the falling groundwater levels that came with the Rot’s retreat. Greg wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d had to do it again sometime soon. Smith had talked about bringing in a geologist to have a look.

Greg closed his eyes and took a few measured breaths, before he started taking his shirt off, without opening his eyes. Already, there were red stains all over it, and he really didn’t want to look closely. Even in the low light of the small oil lamp.

“Are you okay?”

Greg jumped at Fleur’s soft voice. For a second, he had the irrational urge to cover his naked chest again, before he remembered that Fleur had seen him naked all over plenty of times by now.

“I hope that’s not all yours,” she added.

Greg shook himself. “None of it,” he said, and then realized that that was a lie. He held out one of his arms and stared down at all the smaller and bigger injuries there. His proportions had all changed with his transformation, but in some places, the wounds were still clearly recognizable as bite marks.

“I’m fine,” he said because he couldn’t think of anything better. “Really,” he added.

Fleur didn’t look away, though. They were still staring at each other when Nathan returned with a bucket of fresh water. Without another word, Fleur reached for the bloody shirt Greg had discarded, ripped out a piece that wasn’t as bloody, and dipped it into the water. Gently, she then took Greg’s hand and began to wash out the cuts. It burned and stung almost as bad as silver, but he managed not to pull back his hand.

“Got you good, didn’t they?” Nathan asked, and then looked at Fleur. “Seen any sign of the last one? Bernadette spoke of at least four mad ones, right?”

Fleur nodded. “Tried to get to the workers while you and Greg were busy with the other three. He must have had some brains left, cause he ran, soon as he saw Bernadette and Boris.”

“And Bernadette only realized this morning how much trouble we were in?” Nathan asked shrewdly.

Fleur looked away and stopped cleaning Greg’s injuries. “Yes,” she said. “I mean – we weren’t sure... We had to try, didn’t we? See if we could help them.”

“Help them how?” Nathan wanted to know.

Fleur shrugged. “They stopped – stopped acting human right after new moon,” she admitted. “But they still listened to Bernadette, you see? So we figured – neither of us has ever been there when a werewolf goes mad, right? And when they got worse after half-moon, well, we just thought – we wanted to make sure that Bernadette couldn’t stop the process.”

“What changed today?”

Fleur looked down at her own hands. “One of them attacked Bernadette. I think it was the one that got away, actually. Boris got him real good, maybe that’s why he didn’t dare attack the workers.”

“Is Bernadette okay?” Nathan asked.

“Oh yes,” Fleur said quickly. “Boris was right there before he could hurt her. Boris was against the whole idea anyway,” she added softly. “Maybe he was right.”

“I’d say so,” Nathan said. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Look, I kind of get it, okay? You all knew that telling anyone would get those four killed. But at least tell Greg, next time, yes? Preferably before anyone gets attacked.”

Fleur grimaced but nodded. “We’re not going to try again,” she said softly. “It didn’t work, anyway.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Greg asked. “At the very least I’d have known to be more vigilant.”

Fleur didn’t meet his eyes. “We thought you’d tell him,” she muttered, nodding towards Nathan. “And then he’d have gone, and... We wanted to at least try, you see?”

She glanced at him from under dark eyebrows, and muttered: “I’m sorry.”

Greg folded his hands in his lap and looked away. He didn’t know what to say. He’d really thought the pack trusted him, but apparently, he had been mistaken there.

“You don’t think maybe he still had a right to know you were gambling with his life?” Nathan asked archly.

Fleur ignored the question and stared at Greg a few seconds longer. When he didn’t say anything, she seemed to fold in on herself and retreated from the hut slowly, apparently hoping they’d call her back. She hesitated a second longer at the door but finally went.

“Great,” Nathan muttered darkly. “Think we should tell Reed about this?”

Greg shook his head. “What’s the point?” he sighed. “I reckon she said the truth when she claimed they won’t try again. And it’s basically the same thing the Captain tried himself, isn’t it? Wait it out and hope for the best?”

“Idiots, the lot of them.”

Greg just shrugged and reached for the piece of cloth Fleur had left behind, to continue cleaning his wounds. He had just pulled up one leg of his trousers to see how bad the bites were underneath when Bernadette came in.

Greg didn’t look up to meet her gaze. “If you’re here to apologise, too, I’m not in the mood,” he growled and tried not to wince, while he dabbed at one of the bigger bite marks. Everything ached and burned, and the thought that they hadn’t told him hurt most of all.

“Look, Greg, we really are sorry...”

Greg interrupted by throwing the blood-soaked cloth at her. “Just go away, okay?” he hissed. “If I wasn’t important enough to warn earlier, then I’m sure your sorries can wait till after full moon!”

“We never meant for you to get hurt,” Bernadette said.

“Oh, really. If you wanted to keep me safe so much, you could have dropped a hint! Just a little ‘we’ve noticed a problem here, we’ll try to deal with it, but be careful’ would have sufficed! You needn’t even have told me exactly what the problem was!”

“And you wouldn’t have asked? Or told him?”

“We’ll never know, I guess,” Greg grumbled. He turned towards Nathan. “Do we have any bandages?”

“Some,” Nathan said. “Want me to find the garrison’s barber? Maybe he can stitch it.”

Greg stared down at the long, nasty cut that was bleeding in a slow, but steady trickle, drenching his shoes. “I’ll be fine,” he said after a moment. “It’s almost full moon, how bad can it be? I’ll just wrap it up quickly, I want to get something to eat.”

He didn’t want to think about full moon. The wolf was already howling at him to be nice to Bernadette, and not to argue, because there was no way they could win. It was hard to hold onto his anger, to stop himself from apologizing for yelling at her.

Nathan kneeled down in front of him with a hand full of bandages, and they both pretended that there were just the two of them. Nathan insisted on rubbing some alcohol onto the bigger wounds, and through the pain, Greg didn’t notice when she left.

The party was still in full swing when Greg and Nathan emerged from the hut, and a new cheer went up. Greg couldn’t see the rest of the pack anywhere, so he didn’t resist when a new glass full of beer was pressed into his hands. Finding something solid to eat took a little longer, but the woman who ran the kitchen of the pub promised to find him something better than leftovers. Not that he wouldn’t have been happy to take the leftovers.

Brown had already made his decision that no work was to happen tomorrow, which Greg thought was a little late. After all, the mad werewolves were either dead or on the run. Not that he was about to complain. It didn’t take an hour for his wounds to soak through the bandages and stain his clothes again. He had forgotten how long it took for werewolf-bites to even scab over.

At least the booze was plenty. Nathan didn’t drink much, Greg noted, but he wasn’t about to turn down all the free beer people kept offering him.

“Are you okay?” he asked Nathan when he finally had a plate of bread and meat and they settled down in front of one of the new tables.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nathan said. There was a weird look on his face.

“Not thirsty?” Greg asked.

Nathan laughed a sharp little laugh. “Not in the mood for it,” he said after a moment. “I hope someone here sees some sense tonight, and I can go after that last one tomorrow morning before this gets any worse and somebody gets killed. We’re barely ten miles away from Eoforwic, if we’re unlucky, the mad one will get there before the moon sets. Just think of the headline.”

“I’d rather not,” Greg said.

Nathan’s smile was all teeth, flashing in the torchlight.